Read Online A Flaw in the Blood by Stephanie Barron - Free Book Online Page A

no more windows giving out onto this section of roof. The gutter ran toward St. Giles Street in one direction, and in the other, toward the warren of alleys behind it. Georgie was headed away from the street, deeper into the rookery maze. But when Fitzgerald looked ahead, he saw she had come to a complete halt—poised on the edge of nothing.
    A rough hand snatched at his shoulder. He lost his balance, feet flying out from under him, and fell backwards. Georgie's medical bag sailed out of his grasp—and it was probably this sound, of the bag bursting open and the instruments clattering across the tiles, that brought her head around in search of him. Fitzgerald heard her yell—not a high-pitched woman's scream, but a guttural, savage sound wholly unlike the Georgie he knew. He wanted to tell her to save herself—to get away while the tough was on top of him—but the man's hand was at his throat. And then the cosh rose wildly above him—
    Fitzgerald pulled his knees up, hard, into his attacker's groin and dodged sideways, the cosh smashing into the tiles where his head had been moments before. The man toppled. Fitzgerald rolled upright and leaned on his enemy's spine, taking great gasps of air through his grateful throat. The torso beneath him was broad, heavily muscled—the frame of a man who moved stone for a living, or hauled ropes, or placed a value on punishing strength in his line of work. There was the hand that held the cosh—Fitzgerald grasped the weapon and pulled back hard, as though it were a lever, shouting
Georgie, go!
while his enemy grunted and cursed his hatred of Fitzgerald and heaved himself upright so that Fitzgerald was straddling him now, the man corkscrewing like a maddened horse, the powerful wrist snapping in Fitzgerald's grasp and the cosh sailing free of the nerveless fingers—
    “Patrick!” Georgie cried in warning. “Behind you!”
    Of course there would be more men; he'd counted six. A few had probably posted themselves at the building's front and back doors, but the rest would be coming through the shattered window right behind their leader, and probably armed. He tossed the cosh in Georgie's direction, then lunged from the man's back toward the glint of metal in the gutter—one of Georgie's knives, from her scattered bag. The creature beside him doubled up in pain, clutching his broken wrist. The scalpel slid into Fitzgerald's palm, cold and wet.
    He seized his attacker's head, pulled it back, and thrust the edge of the scalpel against his throat.
    “You soddin' little Paddy,” the man gasped, his fingers clawing at Fitzgerald's arm.
    The second tough was almost upon them, but he stopped short when he heard his mate's bubbling gasp.
    “If you come any closer, he dies,” Fitzgerald warned, fingers clenched in the man's dirty black hair. “And then
you
die. Understand?”
    The second man glanced sideways, no doubt calculating the distance from one roof to another, or searching for a broken tile he could hurl at Fitzgerald's head; over his shoulder, Fitzgerald saw a third figure easing across the garret windowsill. His grasp on his prey tightened, and the hum of violence sang in his ears, a familiar hymn as carnal as sex. The knife edge nicked the throat beneath his fingers and the throat whimpered faintly.
    Georgie advanced, the cosh raised high, and said in that same guttural snarl, “We'll cut his neck and call you murderer. A gentleman's word against a labourer's. Are you prepared to hang, my friend?”
    The man inched backwards, his eyes widening; then he turned and stumbled toward the garret window, kicking and clawing his way back up the tiles.
    “Who sent you?” Fitzgerald demanded, in his enemy's ear. “Who pays your wage?”
    An oath spat through his clenched fingers; nothing more.
    “Patrick, they'll be back,” Georgie said.
    He released the black hair and forced the man beneath him, onto the tiles. Then he tore the cosh from Georgie's grasp and delivered a punishing